Maurits Cornelis Escher

See also: Escher

Maurits Cornelis Escher (June 17th 1898 - March 27th 1972) was an artist Dutch, known for its Gravure S on wood, Lithographie S and Mezzotinto S, which represents impossible constructions, the exploration of infinite, and combinations of reasons which are transformed gradually into completely different forms.

Its work tries out various methods of Pavage into 2 or 3 dimensions or represents paradoxical spaces which defy our usual modes of representation. The work of Maurits Cornelis Escher allured many mathematicians to which it was defended to belong. He liked to say to his admirateurs : “  All that anything is not compared so that I see in my tête !   ”

Biography

He was born with Leeuwarden, with the Netherlands in 1898, junior by hydraulic engineer G.A. Escher. In 1903, the family moved in Arnhem. In 1922, Escher, controlling the drawing, and more particularly engraving on wood, stopped its studies. Later, in 1919, Escher integrated the School of architecture and decorative arts of Haarlem; he briefly studied architecture, but moved towards decorative arts, studying under the direction of Samuel Jesserun de Mesquita, an artist with whom he kept the contact until he is killed with his family by the Nazis in 1944.

He travelled regularly in Italy the following years, and it is there that he met the woman whom he will marry in 1924, Jetta Umiker. The young couple settled with Rome after the marriage and remained there until in 1935; when the political climate, under Mussolini, became insupportable, they moved with the Castle-with Œx in Suisse, where they remained two years.

Escher, very enthusiast of the Italian landscapes which were its source of inspiration, was not happy in Switzerland and thus moved still two years later, in 1937, with Uccle (Ukkel in Dutch), one of the large communes of the Area of Brussels-Capital in Belgium. The Second world war forced it to move last once in January 1941, this time at Baarn, the Netherlands, where he lived until in 1970.

The majority of known works of Escher go back to this période  ; cloudy, cold and wet time of the Netherlands enabled him to concentrate entirely on its work, and it is only in 1962, when it had to undergo an surgical operation, that it knew one period of pause in its creation. At this point in time it became Satrape College of ' Pataphysique.

Escher moved at the house of Rosa-Spier to Laren (in the north of the Netherlands) in 1970, an old people's home for artists where it could have a workshop for him, and there died the March 27th 1972.

Work

Among the known examples of his work, one counts Dessiner , a drawing where two hands take shape one the other, the sky and the sea in which plays of shade and light transform fish in water into birds in the sky, and Montée and descent where files of people go up and go down from the staircases in infinite loops, on a construction which, although impossible to build, can be drawn by using easy ways of perspective.

The work of Escher has an important mathematical component, such as the Ruban of Möbius, and number of the worlds which it drew are articulated around impossible objects such as the Cube of Necker and the Triangle of Penrose. Its meeting and its friendship for the British mathematician Roger Penrose were decisive in its contributions with graphic arts.

It also carries out work on the perspective cylindrical. It simply shows with the example of a man lengthened under a double electric wire that the prospect with lines leaving towards a break point is false. The lines are indeed curved, since they cross of with dimensions like other of the observer while tending towards the infinite one.

Topics

The commentators agree to distribute work of Escher in two parts: those carried out before 1937, and those produced as from this year and where it started to more freely give course to the expression of its own imagination.

The first group corresponds to the period spent to Italy and Switzerland. It then reproduced the landscapes and Italian architecture in detail. But this first period sees already compositions suitable for Escher with a very personal representation of the world observed. One already sees appearing the double use of contours: a delimitation of figures functioning in two directions.

During the second time, Escher is interested less in the real-world. It starts to bind various aspects of space and to make, more and more, a double use of contours. He sometimes ad infinitum repeats the juxtapositions of figures all in a their printing Métamorphose or by using the translation, the rotation, the reflection or the Homothétie. These compositions are probably most known of Escher, just like its impossible architectures.

Its research even undertook it to put the finger well on the Fractale S before the mathematicians.

As for the techniques used, Escher almost exclusively used the wood cutting until in 1929. The Lithography and the Xylogravure will interest it then much more.

See too

External bonds

  • Official site of M.C. Escher

  • the strange world of M.C. Escher
  • Museum M.C. Escher
  • Escher and the effect Droste
  • Escher in Artcyclopedia
  • an analysis of the lithography Ascending and Descending

Random links:Saint-Pourçain-on-Sioule | Guy Moal | Psychotropic with the cinema | Tyranastrasz | Microrégion of tightened of Santana